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The 2017 Best Translated Book Award Shortlist

The Best Translated Book Awards shortlist has been announced and it includes many notable books. Doomi Golo by Boubacar Boris Diop is the first novel to be translated from Wolof to English, and Alejandra Pizarnik’s Extracting the Stone of Madness is notably the first full collection of her poetry to be translated into English.

The winners will be announced on May 4 at 7 p.m. EST at The Folly in New York City, and online at The Millions. Created by Three Percent, this annual award highlights great works of world literature published the previous year. Each winning author and translator will receive a $5,000 cash prize thanks to grant funds from the Amazon Literary Partnership.

Past winners of the fiction award include: Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman; The Last Lover by Can Xue, translated from the Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen; Seiobo There Below and Satantango, both by László Krasznahorkai, and translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet and George Szirtes respectively; Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston; and The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal.

In terms of the poetry award, past winners include: Rilke Shake by Angélica Freitas, translated from the Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan; Diorama by Rocío Cerón, translated from the Spanish by Anna Rosenwong; The Guest in the Wood by Elisa Biagini, translated from the Italian by Diana Thow, Sarah Stickney, and Eugene Ostashevsky; Wheel with a Single Spoke by Nichita Stănescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter; and Spectacle & Pigsty by Kiwao Nomura, translated from the Japanese by Kyoko Yoshida and Forrest Gander.